Trio of Former Firemint Senior Devs Found New Studio

Three former senior developers at Melbourne, Australia’s Firemint have today announced their new studio: Loveshack Entertainment. The team has also revealed its debut project, Framed, a narrative-based puzzle game in which players must rewrite the story.

Kiwi Joshua Boggs and Adrian Moore from the UK, who shared the lead development role on Firemint’s SPY Mouse, have been joined by Australian Ollie Browne, another games designer who left Firemonkeys more recently (the studio's name after EA merged Firemint with Iron Monkeys).

“Josh and I really clicked when we worked together on SPY mouse. But we were also both finding that whilst we loved working at Firemint, we wanted to stretch our creative muscles outside of a larger company,” said Moore, co-founder of Loveshack Entertainment. “With Ollie joining the team, we’re now ready to unleash our love on the world.”

The team’s debut game, Framed, is a puzzle game set in a noir comic book world. Presented as an animated storyboard, players can rearrange the order of the panels, changing the way the events play out and the outcome of the narrative.

In pre-production for the past six months, Framed has received funding from both Screen Australia and Film Victoria. It’s slated to release on tablets and PC in late 2013.

Luke is Games Editor at IGN AU. You can find him on IGN here or on Twitter @MrLukeReilly, or chat with him and the rest of the Australian team by joining the IGN Australia Facebook community.